bellascribe

Because it’s fresh on my mind, just having had with a friend a conversation about it — Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke — and because I seem to, it turns out, mention in passing something I’m reading without ever saying more — always meaning to, of course — always thinking I’ll come back to this book or that, that I’ve mentioned, but then I’m off to something else and have forgotten. (What conclusions might be drawn? They’d be wrong. That’s one of the things that’s wrong about inferring from blogs. That’s wrong about keeping blogs! When I look back at what I mentioned as opposed to what I didn’t? It’s all luck and chance! Elsewhere, I’ve written — say, in my [current] journal, even — about what might be more pervasive in my consciousness, what’s more active in the forefront. Elsewhere, I’m talking about, or thinking about…what never gets said here. The blog is just random hit-or-miss, another bit of mix. Now, why I am talking about this: another conversation I was just having. The blog is just another drawer.)

And because just a few days ago — well, maybe, yes, it was last week, already, I watched again Apocalypse Now, which set me to thinking, again, about Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, and questioning for me what was one of it’s most immediate irritations — its structure. So crazy to have all this fragmented parts, so that in the beginning I was even jotting down, sketching out who was who, and when, and where. (I gave it up because I kept forgetting to have the little notepad handy whenever we were going to read, which, quite a lot of time, turned out to be when we were on the road driving to somewhere or other, far enough away for long distance reading.) That’s not the kind of investment I want to make in a novel. I don’t mean that I don’t want to be challenged, that I don’t want to invest myself — oh, of course I do. (I mean, that’s not the kind of stuff I write either or want to write — facile crap that doesn’t ask for your thought or engagement beyond spoon-feeding.) I mean, that I don’t want to be stopping and conferring along the way with C, who I’m reading aloud to, saying, “Now, who is this? Is this _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ ___ __ _ (so and so, who did this or did that, or was the subject of or involved in this or that)?” etc and so on. Having to get my bearings in a way that recalls to mind freshman year in high school, boning up on dates and facts before a chapter test. That’s irritating. That’s not thinking. It’s just a kind of extra, unnecessary activity that bugs me. But then, I am getting older, and I admit that, and maybe it’s not like that for everyone. Maybe if I was on Adderall (or something like).

I think the idea is, after watching the film I mentioned, given the times, etc, the structure is considered to be reflective of the subject matter and times; is given a pass, that actually, I still want to push past. I want to beseech, say, Denis Johnson, you are better than that! (But I am like that, unable to escape myself, a perfectionist prone to overexcitability.)

I love when Salon Books (Laura Miller?) says: (obviously my emphasis)
the Vietnam novel to end all Vietnam novels, Denis Johnson’s celebrated (and misunderstood) epic…

I love misunderstood.

Yet, still, I have my same criticism and desire, and wish that it wouldn’t have such a structure of lack of effective enough structure.

It made me always think throughout that the narrator or author was being ironic when he wasn’t. These obvious statements. And [novel] moments — I kept thinking that there must have been more to them than what was on the page; that they had to be ironic. Joking, even, sometimes. I hated learning or realizing that they were just [passages/bits] having to spell things out! I don’t think this would have happened if the structure would have been otherwise. When I would figure out that what the passage meant was what it meant — that it was to be taken at face value — I felt left out, ripped-off, abandoned, even! All this structural resetting the reader in each scene and time, the obviousness that had to go towards grounding the reader… it seems/seemed very wasted to me and easy to misinterpret (and misunderstand and then to, consequently, feel left down?)

I still don’t feel sure, or even close to, what Johnson may have wanted me to understand about characters’ ideas about the cosmos, and “supernatural” yearnings or tendencies or beliefs. I came away feeling either it was heavy-handed or ridiculous or beyond my comprehension. None of these possibilities please me!

Yet I still love Denis Johnson, and Jesus’ Son.

But back to the conversation, and what led me here to this post. The beautiful prose, Denis Johnson’s writing. What follows are some bits that arrested me.

The ville lay ten miles down the brown river. He walked. After the city, things smelled different here. The reeking water. The smoke from the burn piles of deadfall and trash had the odor of legend, the chicken droppings, even. Everything carried him off — where? To here. But not to this moment. Here he had fished from the back of a buffalo while beside him Brother Thu had held the string of a kite surging in the winds above…even then their lines plumbing opposite depths. One to high school and the air force, one to the monks.

He saw little traffic on the water. An old woman with an old woman’s mashed-in face poled past in a skiff keeping to the shallows, every push of the pole threatening to steal her last breath.

Minh walked under a gray sky, sorrow biting at his throat. He stepped into a banana grove and tore off three of the fruits and ate, tossing the peels in the water as he and Thu had done in a better world.

He imagined his brother burning — he often did — Thu’s body in the flame, dreadful pain outside, going up his nostrils and in. And then as a monkey holds two branches for an instant, lets go of the first and clings to the new one, he was no longer the body, but the fire.

********

The colonel, wearing his headset, sat next to Minh and studied the horizon and seemed to have forgotten the terrors of the morning. Skip, for his part, looked as if they’d never leave him. The colonel hadn’t mentioned his nephew’s behavior. Maybe it didn’t bear mentioning. Perhaps Skip thanked his God right now that he had no headset and that their transport was too loud for talk. But who can look into another’s thoughts? And Minh often felt of the Americans that behind their actions lay no thoughts anyway, only passions…